Tech

In this episode, I speak with Luca Belli about his forthcoming Manning book, “Hidden Influences,” which explains how algorithmic recommendation systems work from socio-technical and ethical perspectives rather than teaching readers to build them. Belli describes how recommenders and users shape each other, why debates about societal harms (including misinformation) often lack nuance, and why “working properly” is hard to define because value is personal and difficult to measure, leading platforms to optimise for engagement as a proxy with harmful side effects like clickbait. Drawing on his background in math, data science, and his work at Twitter, where he co-founded a machine learning ethics, transparency, and accountability team, he outlines the book’s framework-based, timeless structure and its coverage of moderation, measurement, societal impacts, and individual and policy responses.

In this video I experiment with OpenMusicAI to create a 7-minute dramatic, confession-style backing track for a theatre project: a reality TV interpretation of Antony and Cleopatra. Aside from prompt-based music generation tools, and a plethora of other AI music tools of mixed utility, OpenMusicAI has several tools that are actually useful for music creators, such as stem separation and MIDI generation. Is it worth using? I take a look!

In this video, I look at NameQuick for macOS. It connects with local and remote models to help you name files intelligently based on the content of the file. But do you need it? Is it worth it? https://www.namequick.app/

I speak with Ricardo Noriega and Doug Smith from Red Hat at PyTorch Con Paris in 2026 about their experiments using VLLM Omni for video generation. Your journey to stunning videos starts here

A quick walk through a new track from the debut Aeon V EP, "The dark embrace of infinite space" in Ableton Live 12. Listen to the track here: